I begin this exploration of words for emotions with an imaginary word: vellichor.

There are feelings for which we have no words, feelings for which we borrow words from other languages that offer up the right shape and texture in the mouth of what we know to be true inside of us--and now, increasingly, words invented for the purpose of defining more closely our emotions in specific settings. Vellichor is one such word.

vellichor: n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

A word of longing and regret, couched in a specific context, endlessly repeating.